Meeting the Family

Wednesday  7/24/13

We needed to get up fairly early because today we are going to meet some of Mark's relatives.  We had a nice treat for breakfast.  Last night we were able to get some groceries to make our own breakfast.  We had scrambled eggs with ham, yogurt and toast.  We then headed to the train station to meet Anders Hudberg.  We arrived around 09:50 and he showed up just a couple of minutes later.  He said he would drive us to meet his sister as well.  Her name is Eva Britt.  His first question was, "Do you really think we a re related?"  Well we talked the whole way there.  He trains flat coated retrievers, likes to bird hunt and deer hunt.  He is married to Karina who is Finish and has a 6 year old son Melker who will be attending 1st grade in the fall.

We arrived at Eva's home which is in the country around 45 minutes from Gavle.  We talked for quite a while about our family name and what it means.  He said the English translation would be 'skin mountain'.  Everybody we have talked to in Sweden has said that our name was unusual.  It is  not a common name but Eva told us that our name was changed when Mark's great great grandfather was in the military.  He and another man from the same area had the exact same name so one of them had to change theirs.  Our name was Johansson.  What an interesting find.  We shared pictures and took some of them and us.  We were treated to a wonderful lunch of pork, potato salad, bread and cous cous  plus juice.  We were glad to have met this part of our family and we welcomed them to stay with us when they come to visit the U.S.  Anders gave us a ride back to the train station where we needed to catch the 15:10 train to stockholm, not sure what we are doing after that but that hasn't stopped us yet.

Well we arrived in Stockholm, wandered the city streets and finally found a tourist info. center.  We were able to find another hostel and took it as it wasn't too far from the train station.  We dropped off our packs and headed for the old town of Stockholm.  As we were walking the girls noticed many little shops and decided to browse.  We finally were able to get away and head down 

to the old town.  The time frame of this part of Stockholm is roughly 1200-1300 AD.  There were many beautiful buildings surrounded by lots of water.  Also many boats,restaurants and ice cream places.  We wandered for a while, sat for a bit longer and then decided to walk back to our hostel.  We had 11 krona in our pocket and wanted to leave the country with nothing in our pockets.  We passed a McDonalds and all three of us grabbed a cheeseburger, used up our money and had to debit a bit more.  Oh well that was our going to bed food.  Good night for now